My Journey

I am not sure why people would be intersted in my journey, but with the revolution of social networking I can only assume I am just as intersting as other people.  I am currently enrolled in a MBA Program.  I am in my first semester and I am now being introducted to Organizational Behavior and Managerial Accounting.  Both of these subjects are very strange to me as all of my previous education has been in biological sciences.  I am now venturing into business.

I recently had the opportunity to begin consulting a local business on productivity and project management.  I really enjoy being a leader in business and helping businesses succeed with my take on project and task managment.

Goals

Since the title of this blog seems to indicate that I should be providing you some useful information about how to get ahead in life, I have decided to talk today about goals. This short discussion was influenced by the audiobook "Never Eat Alone" by Keith Ferazzi.

Keith Ferazzi speaks of a study performed at Yale regarding how many students 1. Had goals, 2. Wrote the goals down, 3. Did not have goals. It is amazing that 97% of the Yale students studied had no goals. Of the students who claimed to have goals but did not write them down after 10 years they earned roughly double what the individuals who did not have goals earned. The amazing part is the students who had written and defined goals earned on average 10 times more after 10 years than their fellow students. I find this to awe inspiring upon initial examination. I would really like to review the raw data regarding this study to examine its statistical significance. (I am not someone who is impressed because something is cited in a study).

I do think goals are very important. You must have a destination in order to get anywhere in life. For instance, would you leave for vacation with absolutely no idea which direction you would be traveling? No, to get to your vacation spot you must have a destination in mind even if your destination is any random place you might happen upon.

This is not any type of indepth study regarding goals or how to set them. I may decided to work up energy later in life to further explail my position on this or give some suggestions on setting goals, but for now, I just wanted to comment.

Please leave comments and I will respond.

The Land of Broken Promises

I will not promise to begin blogging more frequently as I have in the past. I have not had the time to blog with any consistency as the changes in my job and life have been tremendous. I have moved jobs, living location, etc. several times in the last year. I have also taken up web design. I will post my webpage when I find enough money to buy a domain name and hosting. I know it is not that expensive, but it is amazing how much creature comforts cost these days on an instructors pay......

Over Production

How productive is it to be over productive? Have you ever been so busy defining projects and tasks that your forget to actually DO the tasks you have in your lists? This has been more recurrent lately. The key to fixing this is the calendar. Schedule yourself rock solid times to DO tasks.

This is primarily what I use my calendar for. I have blocks of time scheduled to not look at me email or listen to voicemail where I actually DO the tasks I have already assigned. If you are way behind, this may end up being a whole eight hours.

Back on the Wagon

I know it has been quite some time since I have posted here. It has been hell in the world. I have found that I have tons of useless information that may be of interest to people stuck in my cerebellum. I am planning t0 do a spring cleaning and use my blogs to get some of this stuff re-organized.

Check out my other two blogs at: http:\\kplacour.tumblr.com and http:\\kirklacour.tumblr.com

You can also find me on Twitter. Look for Pangenesis

That's all for now. You will hear from me again soon.

Off of the Wagon......

I fell off of the GTD wagon for the last two weeks. I don't have any excuses, these last two weeks have been the busiest two weeks I have had since becoming a Field Training Officer. I had 22 new employees to track and get ready for their jobs as EMT-Basics on the ambulance. This should have been a time for the GTD theory to shine. I fell off of the wagon.
I am back up and running now. Today is sunday, and I just finished a two hour weekly planning. I think I can get rolling again fairly easily.
I want to give my opinion/interpretation of the lists that David Allen talks about. Your projects are a list of items that require multiple steps to complete. You place a title for these projects in your project list so you can define the next actions and organize reference and notes on tese projects. The next action steps for your projects will go into your task lists to be tracked as any other single action task. For instance, you are preparing a budget, you need to 1. format the report, 2. call your administrative assistant, and 3. review last months expenses. These next actions should be placed in your @ computer, @ calls, and @ office lists to get done. As you complete these tasks check them off of your task list and in your project list.
I am working on a formating technique that utilizes a contact list structure to link your projects to your tasks and calendar items. As soon as I get it refined for Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007 I will post it here.

How Do You Make Money?

The best way to make money I found this past Sunday while watching Gene Simmons Family Jewels. Invest in yourself........ If you invest in yourself you have no choice but to persevere, that is the only way to succeed. You also don't mind working hard to achieve results because the results are personal to you..... Please leave your thoughts.